


can't fight the friction (so ease it off)

by caelzorah, hyoidbone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bondage, F/F, PWP, Post 2x14, Subdrop, also lexa calls clarke "heda" because why the hell not, clarke's a top what do you know, look basically we wrote filth and now we want everyone to be embarassed by it so good job us, mild d/s tones, none of that betrayal stuff in this fic no sir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:00:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3505976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelzorah/pseuds/caelzorah, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyoidbone/pseuds/hyoidbone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes two months for Lexa to find resolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't fight the friction (so ease it off)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look, actual trash from actual trash. We're both so sorry.

It takes two months for Lexa to find resolution – two months of working out boundaries for the Sky People and rebuilding Tondc; of pretending to forget the feel of soft lips against her own; of debating politics in relative peace with the Sky Council; of wondering in all her quiet moments if the blonde girl’s “not yet” had really meant “not you”. Two months.

Clarke strides into her tent one evening after a hunting trip, eyes wild and shoulders tense, windswept. Lexa greets her coolly and earns nothing but silence for it, and when she turns to pay the woman attention she finds that Clarke has crossed the space between them with uncharacteristic silence and a great deal of speed. Lexa feels Clarke’s hands shove at her shoulders, pushing her back to her throne. Her knees hit the edge of the chair and her feet escape from beneath her, and then Clarke is straddling her lap. Lexa has a moment to note stormy blue eyes and part her lips in protest – but then Clarke is kissing her, tangling her fingers in dark braids and pressing against the Commander in all the right places.

‘I’m ready,’ the blonde gasps against her skin when they part. Clarke trails kisses down her jaw, bites at Lexa’s neck, and Lexa grips at the blonde’s hips and sinks her teeth into her own lip, stunned and struggling not to react too keenly. In her lap, Clarke shifts and nips at the lobe of Lexa’s ear; she makes this breathy little whining sound, and the Commander grits her teeth and struggles to keep still, to remain in control when Clarke whispers: ‘I’m ready now.’

But Lexa knows she’s not – she feels it everywhere they touch: Clarke is shaking. She weaves her fingers through blonde hair and whispers nonsense into Clarke’s ear until she calms.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clarke says as she sags, and Lexa cannot stop herself from holding the girl close and pressing her nose against Clarke’s shoulder guard, ever-present since Lexa gifted it to her before the battle of the mountain.

‘There is no rush, Clarke,’ she says gently and kisses the girl’s armour so she will not kiss her skin. ‘And I will never rush you.’

It is not until hours later, sharing a meal by the fire that Lexa comes to understand what has changed. Clarke’s hunting party is huddled by the fire sharing morbid smiles and fresh meat: Bellamy, Miller, Monty, and three grounders where there used to be four. Most of them are injured, bandages peeking from beneath tattered clothing – and when she turns to Clarke with a more critical eye Lexa spots the hint of a bruise running along her collarbone, mostly hidden by her jacket and the cut of her shirt.

When she asks, Clarke explains; they came back from their hunt successful, but _barely_. They ran afoul of some beast in the woods, and it has left them bruised and broken and down a man. And Lexa gets it – she _does_ – loss is a shock to the system, a wake up call, a rush of grief and adrenaline; people do stupid things in the aftermath. So she cannot grudge Clarke for the press of her lips or the shove at her shoulder that preceded it – but she can set it aside as the moment of weakness that it is. She can let it go.

But then Clarke comes to her in the light of the next day, after she has had time to calm her frayed nerves, steps into Lexa’s space and steals the breath from her lungs again. Her kiss this time is soft, and gentle, and nothing like the frantic mess of the night before.

‘Just because I am not ready to reach the finish does not mean I am not ready to start,’ Clarke says – and that is how they begin.

Their relationship is slow. The way they get to know one another in history, personality, self; the way they touch, kiss, speak, argue (and they do a lot of that last one). They are rough hands and cautious fingers putting two broken hearts back together. Lexa is determined to revere every moment; there are things that Clarke is not ready for. Lexa says “I love you” for the first time after three months, and Clarke waits a week to say it back. They share a bed often, but their _first time_ comes just shy of four months of being together – and it is slow, and awkward, and lovely, and perfect, and they do it over and again, and it changes every time.

It is good – and yet, Lexa cannot help but remember the fearless look in Clarke’s eyes before the war, her low tone and her unguarded tongue, the way she stepped into Lexa’s space and forced her back just by speaking. The Sky Leader speaks out against Clan Leaders and Generals, harsh words in the name of diplomacy, and it often leaves Lexa shifting in her seat. The memory of it leaves her heart racing and her throat tight, and Lexa gets used to battling flushed cheeks and biting her lip to quiet the thought.

It doesn’t last – cannot last, hidden in her heart as it is. One evening, alone in her tent with Clarke – so wholly _affected_ by her: her scent, her lips, her hands and how they twine and tug gently at Lexa’s braids – the thought slides out before Lexa can even think to catch it. They kiss slowly, reverently, like every time before – but Lexa can only think about that one time on her throne where Clarke pulled her head back by her hair and marked her neck and said “I’m ready now” like it was a command instead of an offer.

‘I want you to –’ she starts when their lips part, but the words halt in her throat. The blonde tilts her head and offers a small smile, shifting. ‘Clarke, _please_.’

‘What do you want?’ Clarke asks. It comes in a whisper – the same unforgiving tone from when they were fighting, when she called Lexa a liar, lowered her voice and backed the Commander into a table. Lexa cannot stop the shudder that wracks her spine. She jerks forward to reconnect their lips but Clarke’s hand on her chest pushes her back firmly.

‘ _Clarke_ ,’ Lexa says, and the name catches in her throat. Clarke nudges her chin up with her free hand and holds her gaze steady.

‘Tell me,’ she orders lowly. ‘Use your words.’

‘ _Teik ai_.’

‘English,’ Clarke orders, and Lexa chokes. Her ears are burning and her chest is tight; she heaves a breath and finds it doesn’t quite inflate her lungs. ‘ _Tell_ me,’ Clarke says clearly – quietly, like it is a secret thing just for them, and gods, it is. Lexa’s head spins, and it feels like it has been years but it has hardly been a second when Clarke continues, ‘what you _want_.’

She feels the air at her back, Clarke’s warmth at her front, hand on her chest, fingernails digging into her collarbone, breath on her lips – close, but not close enough. Desperation bubbles the words up her throat just as much as desire does.

‘Challenge me, as you did in war. Move me, Clarke,’ she hisses; it comes out as a plea instead of the order it is meant to be. She swallows thickly and tries to bury her pride. ‘Command me.’

Clarke’s lips part in a gasp, and Lexa sees the red flush creep across her pale cheeks and knows that this – this _thing_ she has put forward between them – speaks as much to Clarke as it does to her.

The silence lingers and Lexa’s throat constricts, and suddenly she is battling for breath with Clarke’s lips. The force pushes her back but the blonde guides her until she’s up against something that’s not going to move with their weight.

‘Sit,’ Clarke tells her and Lexa obeys, fingers curling around the edges of the table – bracing herself with white knuckles. Lexa is unable to find a comfortable place to look – cannot stand the thought of blue eyes looking down at her and seeing weakness, but cannot make herself so weak as to stare at the ground – and settles for Clarke's collar, reminding herself to breathe.

She leans forward, palms leaving the table edge and reaching for the curves of Clarke's hips. She's cut short by swatting hands – an idle reminder that she is not allowed to touch the thing she craves and a sharp reminder that she is not in control here. Clarke bends down with Lexa's jaw firmly in her grasp, presses their lips together roughly, and the Grounder feels what little breath she has left leave her lungs in a low gasp.

Practiced fingers pull at the buckles of Lexa's armor and Lexa wants to help – _moves_ to – but is reprimanded again and reduced to being directed, making it easier for Clarke to strip her of her clothing. The advance makes her skin crawl and she shies away. Her partner frowns at the motion, and Lexa uses what little power she has left to order her own head back and expose her neck, forcing her anxious body to obey.

Lips connect with her jaw and Lexa twists and squirms as Clarke slips into her space, tasting the flesh, nipping a line down to her collarbone. She bites and Lexa groans, raising her hands in protest – but immediately the pressure increases. A hiss escapes her lips and she worries her skin will shred between Clarke's teeth.

She is released when her hands retreat to curl back around the table edge and Clarke gently kisses the marks she leaves behind – there is a bruise already surfacing, she can feel it throbbing – back up Lexa’s neck and to her jaw again. Lexa feels a smile form against her skin and hungers to taste it. She turns her head inward to catch Clarke's lips and meets only open space - finds the blonde withdrawn from her.

‘Don't touch.’

She fidgets at the direction, but Clarke ignores it and returns her attention to removing the rest of Lexa’s clothing. Her ratty shirt slips over her head, exposing the map of tattoos with scars for legends canvased upon her body. Clarke has seen every inch of her – has measured every scar and heard their history, learned the meanings of every drop of ink – but that does not stop her hands from inspecting each time as if another might appear without her notice.

Her tongue traces back over the mark at Lexa's collarbone, down the curve of her breast, and her mouth finds her nipple. Lexa is quiet at first, biting her lip, knowing just how thin the tent walls are. Her neighbours have heard Clarke’s exaltations in the past, but Lexa has not allowed her voice to rise in the reverse (no matter how Clarke has tried to make her, fingers and lips and tongue against flesh - no matter how much she has wanted to).

Clarke's mouth drops, moving from one scar to the next before she rests, hovering, above her belly button. Her fingers unfasten the button of Lexa’s pants and hook into the waistband, and the Commander forces her hips up off of the table at the prompt to let the blonde slide them eagerly down her legs. Clarke's caress continues, kissing teasingly down the inside of Lexa's thigh. She nips, causing Lexa to jerk; she receives a second, harsher bite for the movement.

With the new warning in mind, Lexa remains still. The palms of her hands rest on the table while Clarke explores her body. Fingers stroke her abdomen, tracing a long scar that ends at the top of her right hip. Hot breath scalds her skin and she arches back to get closer. She longs to wrap her fingers in Clarke's hair, to feel her touch, but she digs her nails into the table knowing it will not be accepted. Agony burns through her chest, muscles taut in anticipation, and she lets Clarke push her knees apart and lean comfortably into her.

Clarke splays her hands across the top of Lexa's thighs, drags her fingernails none-too-gently upwards to flatten her palms on Lexa’s hips, and Lexa feels the trails of marked flesh form on her skin. It is too much and not enough all at once, and she wants to move her hands from the table – speak loudly, force progress – but something in her rails against the thought, keeps her stationary.

‘ _Clarke_ ,’ she whines.

‘Say it,’ Clarke whispers against her. Lexa's lips part silently, playing at nonplussed, mind somewhere between frantic and flatlining.

‘I can't –’ she splutters, ‘I don't know –’

‘You do,’ Clarke tells her firmly, ‘now _say it_.’

‘ _Heda_ ,’ Lexa gasps, and it is pure, reverent, desperate pleading. ‘ _Ai Heda_.’

It is her own voice on her tongue, the words of her language, but they part from her lips with the bittersweet taste of betrayal. The increasing heat between her thighs drives her forward, cheeks flushed, and a low whine pours out of her in a burst of frustration. Clarke does not give in and Lexa slumps back on her elbows, head hanging below her shoulders, fighting the urge to clear the table and lay Clarke across the surface and wanting to _be_ laid on it instead.

Their eyes meet when Lexa picks her head back up and she does not avert her gaze, does not back down a second time so easily. Clarke plays well in their game – if it _is_ a game that she has led them to with words she isn’t sure she knew the meaning of at the time and doesn’t yet know if she regrets – and it's the only comfort she allows herself. There is a line separating them – a transference of power that happened the second she said “command me” and that has only heightened since – and it has Lexa hot and uncomfortable, and clutching blindly for any part of the authority that she handed so idly away. Clarke does not give Lexa any assurance she'll come out standing on the other side and the uncertainty sends lightning to her core.

Clarke curves her body forward, moulding her form to push Lexa back down. There is a creeping fear that this is too real, too sudden - and all that Lexa is capable of doing is squirming, searching for reprieve.

Any effort to rise is met with annoyance, her partner forcing her down with a strong grip on her shoulder. It takes her by surprise, but when she searches Clarke's face for a reason she finds nothing but stony silence. Lexa bites her lip, her stomach turning the moment Clarke's fingers slide between her legs. She's tense and it doesn't go unnoticed. Everything stills.

‘We can stop,’ Clarke offers. Her voice is no gentler than before, but she offers no blame, no indication that cessation would wound her, and Lexa knows that she can call for a ceasefire any time and Clarke will comply without complaint. It spurs her for the opposite.

‘No,’ she begs, unaccustomed to the desperation in her voice and too gone already to feel shame for it. She grips Clarke by the jacket, pulls her close for a kiss searing with nothing but fight and need. It's enough of an answer to shelf the concern for later.

Clarke strokes her fingers through Lexa's wet heat, avoiding where it’s most sensitive, and uses her free hand to push away from the kiss. She shoves the Commander to her back and Lexa slumps down with defeat new in her bones. Clarke rewards her with a rougher touch.

Lexa catches a strangled cry in her throat and desperately rolls her hips, but she's unable to keep up, unable to meet the next move. She cannot do anything but _surrender_ , as foreign as it feels – and she has never surrendered in her life to anyone in any circumstance, but she would do it a thousand times for Clarke if it would always culminate in _this_. Lexa bites her lip as she watches the blonde's resolve sprawl out in front of her. Her kisses are gentle to Lexa’s hip, following the long scar that ends there, and the Commander trembles and prays for something to anchor her while she struggles not to move.

Clarke’s tongue meets Lexa’s center, making her lurch forward. Her spine arches and she thrusts her hips up, her chest rising and falling with great effort. Clarke retracts, hot breath hovering above, teasing; Lexa cannot contain her groan – will not let herself be denied – and slips her own hand between her legs. 

‘ _Em pleni!_ ’ Clarke snaps and it catches Lexa off guard.

It is the tone she uses in war rooms and meetings with people who will not see her side, the voice that drags agreement out of strangers and sends shivers down Lexa’s spine – but it does not sound like Clarke as she knows her. Lexa’s language is foreign on her tongue but she forms the words as if she has known them forever. Lexa attempts to speak but is silenced by the catch of her own breath in her throat, watching Clarke fidget with the belt looped around her waist and pull it free. 

‘Cl –’ she starts, but her question is answered before it is asked, without chance to process. The leather encases her wrists and Clarke cinches it off, securing her hands together. Her arms are forced above her head as Clarke ties off the other end to the corner table leg. Lexa tests the bond with a gentle tug, reluctant.

‘If you are incapable of controlling your hands then I will have to do it for you,’ the blonde says stonily, and Lexa is loath to admit the way her body burns at the glare she is fixed with before Clarke returns to her task.

On her again, Clarke’s mouth encircles her clit, exploring once more with her tongue. She speeds up and Lexa squirms, breathing in short shallow bursts.  Lexa’s hips lift from the table and Clarke’s arm crosses over her stomach, pushing her back down. The blonde has an immediate reflex for every attempt Lexa makes and she sighs in frustration and yields. Clarke’s free hand turns palm up, sliding one finger – then two – easily into the Commander. Her rhythm is slow, out of time with the roll of her tongue. Lexa growls greedily as she fights her restraints, muscles contracting to draw her in. Her movements are limited and everything in the back of her mind tells her to fight, to flip Clarke over and wrest back her power, but the inability to do so sends shivers down her spine.

Clarke alternates: slow movements when she becomes too rowdy, clit pulsing in her mouth, then quickening her speed to push Lexa to the edge before she can relax, then over again. She teases, and taunts, and denies Lexa release, and then –

It hits Lexa harder than she thought it would; it’s messy, and louder than she ever wanted, but trying to lock her cries in is suffocating and the howl that rips it’s way out of her throat (a cluttered collection of words, of “heda” and “love” and a dozen other things she doesn’t remember afterwards) is almost relieving enough to bring her to tears, propriety be damned. Her body trembles, toes curling against the table, and her knees try to come together. Lexa’s arms tighten against her bonds and her hips are weak in their fight to reach her apex. She’s left spent on the table as Clarke’s movements slow, guiding her back down – hot, burning, simmering, and then suddenly cold.

Lexa tries to pull her arms down and meets resistance, and she retreats to her side, curling her legs into her chest. The stretch in her arms surpasses discomfort – borders on pain – and Clarke doesn’t move fast enough to release her. Her chest feels tight, and Lexa yanks at the belt around her wrists until the wood creaks with the strain. Warm hands grip at her arms, gentle and urging her to still as she tries to fight her way out of the knot. Clarke whispers quietly – hushed cooing noises, sweet things, nothing in particular – and it soothes her enough to release a little of the tension on the leather.

‘I’ve got you,’ Clarke says, voice tender, loosening the knot with precise fingers.

As soon as the leather slackens and falls away Lexa pulls her hands back into herself and crosses her arms over her chest. She wants to curl into a ball as small as she feels, wants to disappear; Clarke doesn’t let her, prodding and pushing her up to a seated position and urging her off the table.

‘Come on, Lexa, I’ve got you – I’ve _got_ you,’ she says again, gentle, loving, coaxing her inch by inch to the warmth of her furs on her bed in the corner.

Lexa practically crawls into them, sluggish and empty. Clarke joins her a moment later, warm and mostly naked, and Lexa lets the woman move her to rest her tan cheek on a pale shoulder and twine their legs together, lets herself be surrounded by smooth skin and strong arms. She hopes that she is not still shaking, but feels like she probably is. Clarke presses sweet kisses against her forehead and whispers nothing of note into her ears, and Lexa’s entire body _aches_.

‘I was weak,’ she whispers after a few minutes have passed and her heart is beating normally again. There is a weight on her chest that only lifts with the stroke of Clarke’s warm hand down her spine, and it makes her throat tighten uncomfortably. Clarke shushes her and nudges Lexa’s head up with a hand beneath her chin.

‘You were beautiful,’ the blonde tells her gently, and holds her gaze to prove it true. ‘And so, _so_ strong to yield for me like that. I know how hard that must be for you.’

It rings of understanding – reminds Lexa of her tent, before the war, when Clarke asked for her trust and Lexa so grudgingly granted it, and of how right she was to do so. Her eyes water and she buries her face in Clarke’s shoulder and shudders as the blonde brushes her fingers over the dark bruise showing on her collarbone.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I’m so – that I’m – _affected_.’

Clarke just shakes her head and smiles, and mutters “it’s okay”s and “I’ve got you”s and “I love you”s into Lexa’s skin until the Commander levels out, clutches her back just as tightly and grumbles unintelligibly into her shoulder.

‘Were those words?’ Clarke teases lightly, and kisses once more at Lexa’s hair.

‘I love you,’ Lexa growls again, still against her shoulder but audible this time. She squirms beneath the furs to get closer to Clarke, to bask in the press of their skin and the warmth that it brings her, still feeling fragile and clinging to any speck of her own characteristic stoicism that the contact can give her. ‘And you can’t tell anyone that I – _submitted_ – to you.’

She nearly chokes on the word, but Clarke doesn’t laugh at all – just moves them to lie facing one another, pressed together head to toe, and lays a series of quick kisses on her cheeks, her nose, her lips, her neck, the mark on her collarbone.

‘I would never,’ she says simply. ‘This is between you and I, and no one else.’

And if Lexa thinks, almost idly, that when she is not so tired or so edgy she might like to try this thing of theirs again, or discuss the possibility at least – because she loves this girl in all her forms, but the way Clarke handles command makes her quiver – well, that is between only the two of them too.

 

\--

 

At breakfast Indra refuses to meet her eyes, and Bellamy pulls faces every time their gazes meet in passing. Seated by Clarke as usual, Lexa puzzles over why – until Octavia strides past, smirking, and says:

‘Did you have a good sleep, _heda_?’

She is addressing Clarke; the blood freezes in Lexa’s veins.

(So, maybe it’s between the two of them – _and_ everyone who heard her rapture.)

Clarke takes her hand beneath the table and holds it until her heart beats again, intertwines their fingers and lifts them to her lips to kiss them until Lexa smiles – and _no_ , Lexa thinks, _it is not so bad being someone else’s_.


End file.
